Ah, gentle reader. I took my beautiful wife to see this film in the theater. We were young, and we went to the movies often, apparently, and I not only made her suffer through not only films based on Saturday Night Live sketches, but also films starring Saturday Night Live alum. For some reason, we thought this would be a funny film, but she was not impressed.
Twenty-one years later (somehow), I picked the film up at a book sale and popped it into the DVD player. And I enjoyed it enough for what it is: a silly comedy.
Chris Kattan plays the title character, a happy-go-lucky veterinarian, basically a Chris Kattan character, whose father and brothers are mobsters. When their father is indicted, the family calls in Corky to impersonate an FBI agent to steal the evidence that the FBI has on them. So he does, impressing the other agents by resolving situations using his special methods–often frantic and panicked flailing of some sort–as he tries to win the heart of an agent (played by Vinessa Shaw).
It’s lightweight, and I might have enjoyed it a little more this time without worrying about how much my wife was not enjoying it.
You know, for a brief period there around the turn of the century, Chris Kattan was a movie star–well, all right, he was also in A Night at the Roxbury and Undercover Brother, both of which I saw in the cinema, so maybe Chris Kattan was just in movies that I went to–but lately (and by lately, I mean for the last almost two decades), he’s had guest starring roles on television and in other films, so he’s kept busy. Hopefully on his terms.
So: An amusing little bit if you’re in the mood for some slapstick and some late 1990s sensibilities. Not as crass as films that come later and a bit better-spirited, but it does have some drug humor and whatnot (but not the trope where the main characters purposefully get wasted to get into whacky situations or let their true selves shine).
